Center on Integrity to Attain Life Fulfillment

As a child, one of my favorite quiet games was "dot-to-dot." The cells in my body buzzed whenever I played this game. It was as though discovering the larger picture hidden within seemingly random elements was expressing some sort of inborn wiring for integrative thinking.

This article is about two dots that, on the surface, may seem disconnected from each other but which, in fact, could not be more intimately connected. These two dots are the most central issues facing us individually, in our relationships, in business, and in our global community today.

Dot #1 is the integrity crisis that is tearing apart our society. You don't need me to tell you how many people are disgusted by today's rampant integrity problems in relationships, business, and politics.

Dot #2 is our quest to experience life fulfillment. Large numbers of people are disillusioned because the life fulfillment they seek eludes them no matter what book they read or workshop they attend. Our current economic challenges and the changing job climate these challenges have created is causing more people than ever to despair over whether they will ever achieve the lasting sense of life fulfillment they seek.

Few people have connected these two dots. Fewer have provided a practical and integrated way to address both of these vital issues - within ourselves, in our relationships, in our businesses, in our society, and as corporate and community leaders.

Take "Carl," a millionaire business executive, who came to me in profound pain because his wife and children had recently left him. Having a true knack for business, he had achieved success beyond many people's wildest dreams. Yet he did not feel fulfilled, partly because of having sacrificed some significant aspects of his integrity in order to achieve this level of success. To make up for this, he became a philanthropist in order to try to make a positive difference in the world. Despite becoming valued and respected in his community as a result, he still did not find fulfillment. Carl was having difficulty waking up and connecting the dots.

From the halls of leadership to the privacy of our own homes, lack of integrity is everywhere. Our massive integrity problems have been caused by extremely distorted ideas about what creates life fulfillment.

My decades as a psychologist working with individuals, couples, businesses, and leaders has taught me that embodying a high degree of integrity and achieving lasting fulfillment require aligning three core drives we are born with:

Authenticity, our drive to be who we truly are

Connection, our drive to bond with others

Impact, our drive to influence the world around us

The more aligned we are with these core drives, the more fulfilled we feel… and the more natural it is for us to live a life of integrity. This is because our three core drives provide us with the checks and balances necessary for integrity-centered life fulfillment.

Overemphasizing our authenticity core drive causes us to be self-centered. Overemphasizing our connection core drive causes us to be codependent or controlling toward others, and/or self-neglectful. Overemphasizing our impact core drive causes us to become obsessed crusaders who neglect both ourselves and those we love while imposing on others our own ideas about what serves collective highest good (disgraced former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer is a case in point).

Our authenticity core drive translates into self-integrity. Our connection core drive translates into relationship integrity. Our impact core drive translates into collective or societal integrity. Leadership integrity lives at the intersection of these three core drives.

Carl felt alive and engaged as a business executive in large part because his responsibilities allowed him to express some of his true talents. He felt that this was the part of his life in which he was able to be the most real. This reflected his drive to express his authenticity core drive. Yet, there were aspects of his authenticity that couldn't be expressed at work, so this by itself didn't end up being as satisfying as he had hoped it would be.

So Carl decided to turn his efforts toward "making the world a better place." This reflected his core drive to have a positive impact in the world. But, because he partly did this to atone for the guilt he felt over having sacrificed aspects of his integrity to achieve his business success, this too didn't fulfill him as much as he had hoped.

Carl also sought intimacy. He wanted to feel more nourished in his relationship with his wife and children. Actually, he wanted them to feel closer with him than they were. This reflected his core drive for connection.

Carl had not realized he had sacrificed his connection core drive for the sake of expressing his authenticity core drive at work and his impact core drive through his community service. Only after his children stopped talking to him and his wife left him did Carl come to appreciate how integrity is possible only to the extent to which we express and coordinate all three of our core drives.

Almost all of us agree that integrity is a crucial core value. Yet, for most of us "integrity" is an abstract philosophical concept rather than a concrete action-based way of life. Truthfully, the better your relationship with your three core drives becomes the more practical and actionable your relationship with integrity will become.

Some of us define fulfillment externally, in terms of success, money, influence and/or lifestyle. Some of us define fulfillment in terms of making the world a better place. Some of us define fulfillment in terms of finding the perfect life partner or having the ideal family. And some of us define fulfillment in terms of self-improvement.

In truth, the extent to which we feel fulfilled depends on the extent to which we are expressing all three of our core drives no matter what our financial or worldly situation might be. Just expressing one or two won't cut it. All three are necessary for us to feel inwardly whole.

Studying "natural developers" has revealed that these unusually well-balanced individuals intuitively develop seven key life skills to achieve integrity-centered life fulfillment. Teaching these seven key life skills to others has taught me that the rest of us can learn to deliberately develop these same "WisePassions," and with similar results.

Imagine how personally fulfilled you would feel if you lived in integrity with all three of your core drives. Imagine how much better off your children would be if they were taught how to live in integrity with their three core drives. Imagine how much more productive, loyal and dependable your employees would be if they were trained in the key life skills necessary for living in integrity with each of these core drives. Imagine what our world would be like if more of us connected the dots between life fulfillment and integrity.

Attaining integrity-centered life fulfillment is a priority whose time has come. The means to accomplish this most important of goals are now available. If not YOU, who? If not NOW, when?